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My Clever Idea for Financing Furniture

Normal people, when they move into a new house, take most of their old possessions with them — beds, kitchen table and the like — and buy a couple of new pieces to spruce things up.

Alas, we are not normal. With our new house in Anna Maria, we have to start from scratch. So Alison has been spending every evening with her nose buried in the latest furniture catalogs, while I have been brooding over how we are going to pay for it all.

Finally, I thought I figured it out.

“I got it,” I shouted — my yell causing neither my wife nor the dog to look up. “We will pay for the furniture the same way I buy books. We’ll buy gift cards on eBay.”

Let me explain.

People who don’t read much apparently get lots of gift cards to places like Borders Books and Music, Barnes & Noble, and other bookstores from friends and family who don’t know them well.

The enterprising among these disappointed recipients sell the gift cards and certificates on eBay at a discount.

As most of you know, eBay is an auction Web site. You place your item for sale at the minimum price you are willing to accept, and you hope competitive bidders drive the price (substantially) higher.

If you search long and hard — and I do — you can get a bookstore gift certificate for 80 to 85 percent of face value. Meaning you get a $50 gift card for around $40 to $42.50. (Yes, lots of people shell out more, willing to pay $48 for a $50 card, just to say they won an auction. But my maximum is 15 percent off.)

I pay for just about all my books — and I read a lot — with discounted gift cards.

I figured we could do the same thing with furniture, and save 15 percent or more on furnishings.

Alison was game. So we divided up the list. She bid on Crate & Barrel gift cards and I went after Pottery Barn ones. (Those two chains are going to be getting most of our furniture business.)

And after a month of concerted effort, what single adjective would sum up our progress?

Lousy.

We won exactly two cards, even though Alison persuaded me to be willing to pay 90 percent of face value. Alison got a $300 store credit for $270 and I got a $100 gift card for $86.

Alas, our furniture is going to cost a lot more than $400. I guess we will be paying for our furniture via credit card, like everyone else.

You are better off buying your furniture locally from a store that will also provide service if necessary.

Also, Pottery Barn and Crate and Barrel delivery charges are OVER THE TOP. Local stores will deliver free, for the most part.

Believe it or not, LazyBoy now has very PotteryBarnish upholstered furniture, gorgeous patterns, and is VERY comfortable. It is no longer just recliners! Two of their stores are in Bradenton and Sarasota. You could shop for your furniture up north, but have it ordered from a FL store.

My daughter, who has bought almost every piece of furniture and every rug at Pottery Barn, has bought two sofas and chairs from Lazy Boy. She prefers their quality and comfort.

This is not economy. P&A have not approached true tightwaddery, not even in shouting distance. Go to C-Mart, P&A. Shop the Florida Freecycle and Craigslist (no frugal person would acquire furniture that had to be expensively shipped). A mere ten percent in savings is meaningless! Don’t settle for less than fifty percent, and remember free is much better.

We furnished our vacation house, mostly “from scratch”, as well. I found that some internet comparison shopping made a big difference to the household goods (small appliances, linens, etc.) that are lightweight and do not incur significant delivery charges. For all of these items, I did compare prices across sites like amazon, target, kmart, sears, smartbargains, overstock, etc. I was surprised as to which site was least expensive–and found that it differed by item. It is also worth it to check the “shopping engines” and google the item if you have a specific model in mind.
For furniture, you are MUCH better off finding local consignment and used furniture places. I was able to find lovely things at these places, quite reasonably. These supplemented some of the family pieces that I had from my parents, that had been cluttering our main house.
Of course, it will take time to visit the consignment shops–but that is fun, and you can furnish the house over time. If you have a decent sofa, things to cook with, sheets and towels, and beds (mattresses with frames are sufficient at first), then you can gradually find the rest. This approach also allows you to determine how you will actually use the space, so you can devote your budget to items you will use the most/care the most about.
good luck, I think this part is the most fun!

The “social experiment” is sounding pretty plausible with this post but….I want to second joanie’s suggestion to shop at a local store. I’ve read enough of both of your (referring to the authors’) work, blogs, columns etc. to realize that engaging in trade at the local level when a website is available is just not what you do but in this case you should think about it. Had you 6 extra weeks, you would probably find that quality, comfort, durability, and good price could all be achieved without all the associated handling charges and often financing (cringe) is available. In my shop, the quickest way to get a discount is pay cash for a large order so you could try that…

I was the originator of the “social experiment” idea, but after reading this entry, I’ve begun to think the truth must be even weirder. I invite others to speculate as to the real reason behind this blog.

Could P&A be some kind of literary deconstructionists left over from the seventies and eighties? Are they trying to do for blogs what Derrida did for French literature or Rei Kawakubo did for fashion? What the heck is going on here?

P&A – please don’t climb onto the pottery barn/crate and barrel bandwagon and have an interior that looks the same, and has the same lasting quality (not) of so much of the rest of America. This is a million dollar house and begs for a creative, imaginative decor. If you must buy mostly new furniture, at least throw in a few antiques, or some furniture made by local craftsmen, or even some garage sale or thrift store finds.

On the other hand, if you really want the PB and CB look, check out ebay. You can often find closeouts there at a huge discount. Especially for things like rugs, window coverings and accessories.

A month of concerted effort nets $44 savings on gift cards, and every evening is spent with Allison’s nose in furniture catalogs, but $7,000 of lighting fixtures are chosen in an afternoon with no comparison shopping and late enough in the game that backordered items put occupancy dates at risk. This again smacks of fiction, not real processes being used to create a home.

An overarching framework that identified critical path activities, decision points, and anticipated expenditures would have helped make sure time and $$ were expended to best results, and a retrospective look at things that “woulda, coulda, shoulda” been done differently would seem in order when this “blog” wraps up to meet the stated objective of recounting successes and failures. I can’t help but keep tuning in, even though none of that seems likely to happen!

No, not like everyone else. NOT everyone else pays for their furniture with a credit card. Didn’t it say somewhere this guy was supposed to be some kind of financial whiz? Longtime reader/lurker, now THIS is completely over the top.

I just bought an apt and had to furnish it from scratch. I found great stuff at crate and barrel and had it recovered by an upholsterer in fabrics that matched my apt. They turned out great and no one would know they are from Crate and Barrel and Restoration hardware. Downside is, the shipping fees are through the roof. But if you get things at 1 or 2 stores, they will cut you a deal.

I cringe everytime there is a new entry, they are really pushing the “easy” button now; nothing worthwhile to report. Nothing against PB/C &B but after building a custom home why fill it with a homogenous collection of furniture that is going to look like a house featured on Home & Garden TV that has been staged for a quick sale. My time is too valuable to spend it on E-Bay looking for discounted cards. Anna Maria is not the boondocks. I am quite sure there are decent stores on the main land where you could at least purchase a

Hit the submit button by mistake. Anyway, there has to be stores that are local to obtain a few good pieces of furniture, the basics. How will this house have any personal feel if everything came from a catalog/on-line site. It’s all one great rush – there’s that occupancy deadline!!!!

Cindge – Paul writes a small financial column in the NYT on Saturday (I am writing this on Friday and you can read the column on line tomorrow). Based on what I’ve read here – and his column in the NYT – he apparently reads 150 magazines a month and picks a few favorite articles to summarize in his NYT column. If this post is supposed to inspire confidence in the ability of people who write in the business section of the NYT – I think it has failed. Working how many hours to save 50 bucks? Doubt my housekeepers or lawn guys would be interested in that kind of work/return ratio. Robyn

I’m…at a loss for words. the experiment hypothesis is indeed looking likelier by the day. not that they will ever, ever read this comment, but I would second (or third?) the idea of spending some time going to salvation army stores, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I guarantee it would be time better spent than hunting for free money on ebay! southern thrift stores are often great, in my experience, though of course it does take time and careful shopping, so–why am I even saying this!!!?

I’m convinced they are getting something for product placements in this blog, because that is the ONLY way this kind of article makes any sense. They plugged Borders, Barnes & Noble, Ebay, Pottery Barn, and Crate and Barrel AND the idea of buying gift cards, all in one article.

This has got to be product placement advertising like in the movies. In fact, the more I think about it, alot of the stuff in these blogs could have been product placement.

There is no way someone with ideas that ridiculous would be writing a financial column for the New York Times.

Another longtime lurker here – I’ve never posted. I don’t have a real problem with a lot of A&P’s decisions – it’s a custom house, and they should decide what’s important to them. Personally, I think the most ridiculous parts (the pool shape, the roof deck) are terrific because they at least show individuality.

But why on earth would you go to all this trouble and then make your custom home’s interior look like the models that builders put together? All pottery barn and crate and barrel furniture in a house says “expensive and bland”. Why not at least look for more interesting local stuff the next time you’re in FL? Or look in ebay. The next post will probably say something like “oh, and pottery barn has framed posters we can buy for decoration!” *shudders*

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They've found an idyllic tiny town in Florida, they've bought a piece of land and now Paul B. Brown and Alison Davis are setting out to build their dream house. How hard can it be, they wonder, even though they live 1,500 miles away, they've never built a home before and they don't know anything about architects, builders, local zoning laws or financing? On this blog for Great Homes, they recount their successes and failures and will chronicle their adventures to come.